 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
5 May 2008 Dear Sponsors, Our recent trip to Haiti (March 26 – April 11) was very successful even though we visited Haiti during a time of great hardship for the Haitian people. There is currently a food shortage in Haiti causing a crisis situation. During our visit, there was rioting in the capital which led to the dismissal of the Haitian prime minister. Food prices are extremely high making it even more difficult than usual for people to be able to feed their families. The international community and the World Food Program are doing what they can to help, but it will take time for long range solutions to this problem. There has also been a problem with corruption in customs and in an effort to “clean house” the president of Haiti has made some changes to the whole customs process which has greatly slowed things down. The customs fees have also become outrageous, which makes the idea of sending food into the country impractical. If you would like to help your sponsored child’s family, the best way to help them at this time is to send them an extra financial gift. If this is something you would like to do, please contact us. Even with these difficulties, we were able to process 673 children on this trip – just 2 more than our record-breaking trip in October ’07! We had one team member who could only stay for our first week in Haiti but on the day he left, another team member flew into Haiti to take his place. So we always had a team of 7 people, which we dubbed the “Seven for Heaven” team. We hope to have photos from this trip posted to the “trip photos” page on the web site soon. Be sure to check them out! We also have photos of MANY children waiting for a sponsor on the “child in need” page of our web site. If you know anyone who has thought about sponsoring a child, now would be a great time for them to act on it! On this trip we updated the following schools – the Primary School in Terrier Rouge, Ouvray, Juchereau and Roche Platte. If your child was absent from school during their regularly scheduled updating visit, they will automatically be put on the list of children to be updated during our next visit to Haiti and we will do the best we can to see them then, even if their school is not due to be updated at that time. Next fall we plan to update the following schools – the Center of Protection in Terrier Rouge, the Secondary School in Terrier Rouge, Danda, Paulette and Phaeton. Our next trip to Haiti is scheduled for late September or early October 2008. As of this writing, we have many people who have expressed an interest in being a part of this team. We plan to spend approximately 2 weeks in Haiti again in order to complete the work load scheduled for that time of year. Please remember that your annual sponsorship renewal will be due in August. We will begin to send out reminder notices in July. Please plan ahead for this so we can get the school fees to Haiti before the start of the school year. There are many expenses for the pastors at the start of each school year so it is important for us to get the fees sent to them as quickly as possible. We still have not yet been able to get our new web site for the His Hands for Africa program up and running but we have added a page to our His Hands for Haiti web site with information about this Africa program as well as photos of children who are waiting for a sponsor. We would like to encourage you to check out this new page, which can be found by clicking on the “His Hands for Africa” button on any page of our His Hands for Haiti web site. We hope to have a separate web site for the Africa program soon. Thank you again for your interest in the needs of the children of Haiti. Your help is greatly appreciated both by them and by us. We are excited about the plans God has for us and for the children of Haiti, as well as the children of the Great Lakes region of Africa, as we move ahead in this ministry. Thank you so much for your part in this ministry and thank you for your continued prayer and support. For Him and for the children, Jamie Charles Child Sponsorship Coordinator |